Guest Column: Within our democratic society,we can and should do better

By Medicine Hat News Opinon on October 21, 2017.

The first thing on my list on Oct. 16 was to visit the Family Leisure Centre to vote. My obligation fulfilled, I got on with the rest of my day. There was maybe a little wisp of smugness in my smile but I knew I had done nothing heroic. It had taken only a few moments out of my day. It was a celebration of democracy for me and for the 17,308 others who bothered to show up. But that’s only one-third of all the voters in our town.

I have some concerns. We say we live in a democracy. On a select few occasions we are reminded of this concept. Election days like the one this past week is one of those occasions. Our national anthem blares at us at sporting events (why?) and we stand as one people out of respect for our democratic nation. And once a year we become vaguely aware of Remembrance Day, a day meant to help us remember that our democratic freedoms come at a price.

But if we are honest with ourselves we must confess that most of us rarely think about what it means to be a democratic citizen. Most of us are preoccupied with the daily grind, the 9 to 5, the dating game, the status game, and the addictive pursuit of happiness through chasing stuff. We spend our days chasing dreams and chimera, rarely realizing or admitting that once we catch that latest ‘must-have’ or ‘must-do’ we aren’t any happier. We’re far too busy to take democracy seriously. Very few of us are innocent of this charge, myself included.

So there may be something wrong with our idea of democracy. Democracy is a horse and buggy kind of thing while today we all want Ferraris and Teslas instead. It might be worthwhile to return to that horse and buggy idea of democracy to see if we’ve forgotten something. Stripped down to its bare skeleton, democracy is a very simple idea. Fundamentally, it demands that each member of the group, tribe, clan, city state, town, region or nation, has an equal voice, has a chance to be heard, and is a part of the decisions that affect the group.

Many First Nations, and many other Aboriginal people, practised this form of democracy and so did the ancient Greeks of Athens. An equal voice, wanting to be heard. Mr. X has no more power than me, in spite of his wealth, his connections, or his education. We all have the power to speak and the right to be heard. We all matter. We all have only one ballot.

So democracy, properly understood, is about equal rights. It’s not about voting, or political parties, or prime ministers who love selfies, or presidents who don’t even know they’re being laughed at by the entire world, or dictators who claim to represent ‘the people’, but who are driven by the love of their own image and hypnotized by the phantom of their own legacy. Democracy is about the fundamental belief in the irreplaceable worth of every human and the concomitant belief that every human is capable of, and responsible for, making thoughtful, informed, and community-oriented decisions.

But if we follow the debate of any democratic contest these days, including the debates, flyers, and door-to-door conversations of the last few weeks in our town, the buzz is so far removed from these two fundamental beliefs that democracy was clearly not invited to the party.

We hear candidates falling all over themselves to be “fiscally conservative.” They’ll all create jobs by attracting businesses, by developing the river as a tourist generator, by cutting taxes and wisely overseeing services and so on. This is all talk about responsible accounting and wise stewardship of resources, and we all want that, of course, as a minimum. But this posturing is really all about each candidate hanging bobbles in front of the electorate, little shiny things that will entice voters to mark that colour in the circle in the right place. And voters should be ashamed of themselves for being so easily mislead. We should be ashamed that all we value is a few more dollars in savings on our home heating, on our Tigers tickets, and on our property taxes. Any objective observer standing on the sidelines would hear only “ME, ME, ME! What’s in it for ME?” We can do so much better than that.

Imagine a community where it is clearly understood and accepted that no child should ever go hungry or unloved, that everyone who wants to work can, that no one is ever actually homeless, that newcomers are given the support needed to successfully become part of the larger community, and that the transit needs of the few are protected. Imagine a community where it is clearly understood and accepted that the quality of our lives together is more important than the quantity of things we hoard individually. That would truly be democratic.

Peter Mueller is a long-time resident of Medicine Hat who, in spite of all the evidence, continues to believe we can build a better world.